The Fence - Dick Lehr [53]
Richie Walker, listening from his cruiser as he awaited a tow truck, knew exactly where Walaikum’s was located. But he decided against racing immediately toward the shooting scene. He adopted a wait-and-see strategy of monitoring the radio for any developments—particularly any news about the direction of the suspects’ escape.
Given that Walaikum’s was in their district, officers from Roxbury were the first to arrive. Jimmy Rattigan and Mark Freire, partners in the Bravo 101 car, were only several blocks away dealing with a stolen car that had been torched. “It was still burning when we got there, and the fire department was coming,” Rattigan said. The two were known on the street as Rocky and Bullwinkle. Rattigan was taller—topping six feet—and he weighed about 270 pounds. Freire was at most five-ten and weighed 190 pounds. They’d always worked in Roxbury and became a team shortly after Rattigan joined the force six years before. “We kinda hit it off, kinda policed the same style,” Rattigan said. By that he meant they were pro-active. “We’d climb trees, we’d climb rooftops, we’d hide in bushes to catch these guys.
“Everyone knows cops who won’t get out of the car in pouring rain—and me and Mark would get out and just start walking the hallways of the projects and catch somebody with a pistol and drugs and stuff. So we were always aggressive. Something like this—a police officer shot—we gotta go give it 100 percent.”
Rattigan and Freire pulled up to Walaikum’s behind another officer from their station—Ronnie Curtis, who’d also been at the car fire. Curtis ran into the restaurant first, dodging bystanders. Rattigan looked and could see the victim. “You could see his legs inside the front door, pointing out towards the sidewalk.” Blood was everywhere. “It was one of those things,” Rattigan said, “you knew right away somebody’s gonna be dead.”
Curtis was yelling on his radio, “Get us an ambulance down here! Get us an ambulance down here!” The urgency in his voice confirmed for Rattigan the seriousness of the victim’s condition. He and Curtis had once worked together as emergency medical technicians. “It’s pretty bad if Ronnie’s saying that, because he’s a pretty calm guy.”
Rattigan was next to his cruiser when a car driven by a security guard pulled up. The driver said he’d seen the shooters take off in a gold Lexus and that he’d gotten a partial license plate number. Rattigan was on his radio right away.
“Bravo 101,” he yelled. “Bravo 101.”
The dispatcher replied, “The 101. Come in, 101.”
Rattigan told the dispatcher what he had, and the dispatcher was immediately broadcasting on all channels. “7—6—2,” he began. The plate number was actually incorrect, but that was what the guard had thought he’d seen. The car’s model, however, was on the money: “Gold Lexus. Heading down Warren.”
Other officers began pulling up. Rattigan yelled for Freire over by the restaurant’s entrance. “We still believed it was an off-duty police officer shot because neither one of us made it in to see if we recognized him.” The two climbed into their cruiser and sped off to search for the fleeing gold Lexus.
When Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio arrived, they found the scene chaotic and bystanders screaming, “He got shot, he got shot.” Burgio saw the bloodied man on the ground and thought he recognized him. He would have bet money it was Craig Jones. He yelled this to Williams, but Williams looked and knew right away this was wrong; the victim was not Craig. Williams also knew the victim was not a cop. He called in the update, that the shooting victim at Walaikum’s was not an officer down.
The officers arriving at Walaikum’s faced a number of key tasks at hand—attend to the